Open Writing

In the railway camp at De Doorns in the Hex River valley a lot of personal triumphs and tragedies were played out during the period 1939 to 1942. My earliest memories date from that time. The families in the camp were mainly English speaking. A large secondary school had an English section. Our teacher was my aunt, Miss Deverill. My sisters, being five years my senior, were in the main school.

My dad owned a 1936 Dodge Super de Luxe which had two metal-encased lockable spare wheels mounted on each side of the engine bonnet, half recessed into the mudguards. Our next door neighbour had a 1937 Packard. The Railway folks were certainly well off compared to the farmers. Before the Second World War broke out we were experiencing the tail end of a long depression.

As kids in the camp we were never short of friends. There was a large coal-ash dump on a clay base behind our row of three-bedroomed houses. We dug interleading trenches and chambers about two metres deep in the clay, covering the excavations with old corrugated iron sheets. Lighting was provided by little wicked Vaseline bottles, using paraffin as fuel.

The older kids, boys and girls, were the captains, sergeants and corporals. We small fry were the workers and honorary privates. I never reached the inner sanctums of these "digs".

Behind the camp was what we referred to as the kopje, a hill spur which forced the main railway line into a near hairpin bend before it entered De Doorns station from the north. The wild flowers around there were spectacular after rain in the early spring. The show of both white and orange chincherinchee (Ornithogalum dubium) were most notable. There were also thick stemmed but shallow rooted broad trunked succulent plants with water filled leaves.

Suitably sized plants were used in an exciting game by us kids after copious spring rains. We gouged straight shallow channels in the almost one-in-one slope which ended in a little stream below the kopje. This stream was bone dry for the greater part of the year. Having selected a suitably sized succulent, we would trim the roots to form two reins and hollow out a saddle in the red steaklike flesh of the stem. Then we would shape the underside of the stem to fit the channel. We had a horse!

The jockey of the horse would pull a thick jute bag, with holes for head and arms, over his usual khaki shirt and shorts - and the game was on. Many a youngster came to grief, causing great hilarity amongst the mob. Collisions were frequent, cuts and sprains were numerous, but there were no fatalities. This season was short in duration as things soon dried up.

I remember watching a partial eclipse of the sun through dark photograph negatives. I think the year was 194O and full eclipse was visible up Calvinia way. One of my sisters climbed the kopje to view the phenomenon and as she scaled the view point rock she put her hand on a Skaapsteker, a type of grass snake, which was sunning itself on top of the rock. Luckily she was not bitten ecause the snake was venomous.

General Jannie Smuts was in charge of our war effort and one of his ploys was to transport Allied troops from Cape Town to Durban by rail. It safeguarded them from torpedo or mine attack while rounding the Cape by ship, en route to either the Middle or later the Far East. The troops also served as a show of strength against the local Nazi sympathizers. These troop trains had to stop at De Doorns to have a banking or extra engine attached and also to allow the mainline engine to take on water. We kids handed out fruit, fresh and dried, to the troops and in return would receive autographs and souvenirs.
Usually there were four to six trains, passing through at ten minute intervals. The first Coke bottle and Black Jack chewing gum that I saw was at the De Doorns station bookstall during 1939.

Most folks owned short wave radios. Because of our location deep in a valley, surrounded by mountains, most houses had very tall wooden-posted aerials. Radio reception was best on shortwave in the evenings. Medium wave was very crackly during the day. My Dad cried when the radio brought the news that HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales had been sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya. Some weeks before the pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Dad had served in the Royal Navy, leaving in 1910.

During those wartime years there was a secret shortwave radio broadcast at 7 pm each evening in which opponents of the war effort were named and warned. The local school principal walked upon a Union Jack flag lying on the ground during assembly one morning. He was named and warned that very same evening.

A huge scrap iron collection campaign was going on. The scrap was weighed and paid for at the Goods Yard at the station. Dotted about the veld were heavy gauge iron pill boxes, erected either during the Boer war or First World War. There were lots of spent lead bullets lying around. We used donkeys and carts to bring the iron plates from which the pill boxes were constructed to the Goods Yard. There was money in it, but I never saw a penny of the income. At my age then, it was just good fun to play at this War game.

One youngster lost his legs when he crawled under a railway goods truck while shunting operations were in progress. The rest of us had great respect for these movable iron monsters.

Saturday evenings brought a great entertainment event - bioscope (movies) in the Railway institute's double storied corrugated iron hall. There were regular breaks to change reels and many unscheduled breaks. The audience was segregated by a low curtain, whites furtherest from the screen and coloured folk up front. Each family sat in their usual places.

My Mom sent me to O"Reilly's general dealer store to buy, for one shilling, a five-pound paper bag of unshelled peanuts. I was one of several youngsters on the same errand. At the end of the show, having stood to attention during the playing of God Save The King, the cacophonous crunch of peanut shells left at our feet filled the bioscope.

Errol Flynn, Deanna Durbin, Shirley Temple, Zorro, The March of Time... Roll on next Saturday.

The local butcher sent an order book around in which he announced what he intended to slaughter. My mom would select her choice of meat. Our weekly order was large and generous and did not cost more than two silver coins. Fruit was abundant, cheap and of excellent quality. Farmers could no longer export it because of the war. Crops were converted into wine and spirits for the duration of the war.

Before the war, I recollect, grapes and deciduous fruit destined to Cape Town on the weekday daily fruit train were delivered to the Goods Yard on wagons drawn by teams of mules. The packing was either hessian-topped cane bushel baskets or smaller matchwood punnets.

During the heavenly summer months we would knock together model wooden battleships and cruisers and re-enact the Battle of the River Plate amid the water lilies of a shallow farm dam. Mud lumps were used as projectiles and the Graf Spee always scuttled itself. After all, we had won one major battle early in the war.